It was hard to know which was the more shocking, the half-baked ambition of a 17-year-old ballboy to shape events or the frustration of the multi-millionaire footballer who put the boot into him.

Eden Hazard’s defenders say he was merely trying to separate the ball, an essential work tool, from a misguided adolescent who had earlier advertised himself as a “king” of his modest trade — and also his plan to perform some serious time killing.

The kid may have some redemption but in the meantime it is reasonable to wonder if he might just be the latest teenaged creation of Harry Enfield.

What isn’t in doubt is the excruciating timing of this wretched incident.

The ballboy displayed an attitude to sport that was so warped and depressing, it invited still wider questions about the current health of the football culture, as if we weren’t bombarded with a fresh consignment of them on an almost daily basis.

Hazard, a beautiful talent on the best of his days, was maybe displaying something else. Perhaps it was the failure of his business to understand the crying need for new levels of personal responsibility, something that from time to time might just suggest an awareness of another world where setback and frustration are not the rarest phenomena.

It might have helped if Chelsea manager Rafael Benitez had struck a less equivocal note when carefully apportioning blame afterwards — something more on the lines of his conquering rival, Swansea’s Michael Laudrup, who while acknowledging that Hazard had reason for quite severe irritation, was bound to make the point that his action had been something he would surely come to regret.

That was the perfect note from a manager who had been so heavily patronised by the Chelsea boss before the game. Benitez had explained that while Laudrup was having a successful time in the middle of the Premier League and advancing on a Cup final for the first time in the club’s history, the real hard pressure came when you were in charge of a great club like Chelsea pursuing the highest goals.

There was, we had to see, such heightened level of expectation from everyone concerned. Yes, of course, the temptation might have been to reply, and this is especially so when your squad are so filled with some quite extraordinary individual talent like that of Juan Mata, Oscar and the suddenly afflicted Hazard, not to mention that as recently as last spring your predecessor delivered both the Champions League and the FA Cup.

Laudrup, the great player and most promising of managers in a new world to which he has adapted so impressively, predictably eschewed the chance of some easy riposte. Instead, he compared his small fairytale with that of the giant one created by Swansea’s Wembley opponents Bradford. It was a neat defining of fine but sharply different levels of achievement. Meanwhile, there was some early talk of Laudrup’s stock rising so fast he might well be a candidate to return to his familiar theatre of action in Spain as a possible successor to Jose Mourinho at Real Madrid, a position which Benitez has from time to time announced his credentials.

Laudrup’s candidacy may seem somewhat premature but no one could say that Swansea under Laudrup have not only retained the pleasing quality of their football but also displayed a growing tactical nous. The signing of Michu has to be bracketed with Manchester United’s move for Robin van Persie as transfer dealing of brilliant certainty and almost everything about the Swansea operation has been a cause for admiration in these times when so much of football has been cast in both moral and financial confusion.

Swansea have declared a belief in both classic football and those means by which the most successful clubs at all levels have generally progressed, which is to say by investing in the knowledge and style of a superior football man and then giving him a free hand all the way to that point at which the best of his work appears to be done.

It was thus sad and ironic that one of the most demoralising incidents of a season in which not only fair play but basic decency has been so imperilled should come to the home of Swansea.

The evidence, though, is they are smart enough to accept the need for renewed vigilance — and not least a hard word with the ballboys.

Super Novak’s honestly out of this world

When Novak Djokovic took time this week to insist that his remarkable powers of recovery were the result of prodigious but scrupulously ‘legal’ work, he may have been anticipating a sad but inevitable scepticism in the wake of the Armstrong affair.

The only point of comparison, we have no reason not to believe, is that since Armstrong’s drug-fuelled domination of the Tour de France, the currently sensational Serb has produced the most striking evidence of a sportsman on the point of utterly dominating his field.

Both Andy Murray and Roger Federer were no doubt hell-bent on winning the chance to dispute such claims when they went into their Australian Open semi-final this morning but one of their most demanding tasks was surely stepping beyond the ever growing shadow of Djokovic.

His demolition yesterday of David Ferrer, who in the absence of Rafa Nadal will shortly be elevated to world No4, was more than a piece of stunning virtuosity. It was an invitation to look into a world of sporting perfection, a combination of haunting skill and power and perfectly tuned fitness. Ferrer, who has the well-earned reputation of being one of the game’s most resolute performers, walked off court as a man who for at least once in his life had been forced to seek the shadows.

He had not only been beaten but stripped of all powers of resistance. In an age of doubt, Djokovic has felt the need to assert the legality of his methods but he can hardly complain at the suspicion that he is receiving help from some other planet.

Sagna’s Bac in shop window

When quizzed about his loyalty to Arsenal, Bacary Sagna was once again non-committal, saying: “I don’t want to give an answer now because a lot can happen in football.”

Indeed it is true — among the developments could be a few signs that Sagna is still anything like the player he promised to be a few years ago. Arsenal’s revival against West Ham was remarkable for several reasons, and not least a better than adequate performance from their full-back. Perhaps he remembered his place in the shop window after his appalling performance at Stamford Bridge.